June post partum

June 11, 2018

(3/9/2019 note: I think this was more of a reflective piece, rather than an entry capturing my current state. We had come back from Italy a few days ago, I think, so the travel exhaustion triggered all these thoughts on the many stages of exhaustion I had felt)

A school of exhaustion 

• Motherhood has schooled me in how to put one foot in front of the other while exhausted. It is still so difficult 
• First pregnancy exhaustion: Nausea knocked me back a lot. Spent hours every day on the couch watching TV during the worst of it (about 6-8 weeks).  
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• Then iron deficiency. At the end of every day it felt like I had run 15 miles. That is not an exaggeration. I have run 13 before and that was exhausting, but then I felt like I had gone well past that. 
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• The middle of the night exhaustion in the beginning: Tearing yourself from your bed is a difficult process. You are fighting against so much inertia. But, because it's the early days of having a baby, you can still manage to feel refreshed after a few solid hours of sleep.   
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• Then the 7-month exhaustion, when the adrenaline of a new baby has worn off ages ago, the months of slept debt have accumulated, and the rest of your life is coming at you 100%.  To top it off, the constant bickering with your spouse is mentally and emotionally exhausting. In this period I never felt "turned off." Up and at it in the morning with school, getting home in the evening to put Charlotte to bed, helping Daniel with homework until late at night, waking up once or twice to feed Charlotte during the night. There was no reset button, just a constant cycle of having to do something at least every couple of hours, night and day. This is the most soul-crushing exhaustion where I felt like I was doing everything wrong and nothing would ever change. My joints ached, my throat always hurt (probably from all the yelling at Daniel) and I felt like I was running a slight fever all the time.  
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• The wired exhaustion. Many a night I have laid in bed unable to sleep despite being exhausted because of deep anxiety about something. Usually it was about how long Charlotte would sleep. When we were sleep training her, I dreaded hearing her cry and then forcing myself to sit through it. The dread would keep me up, one time I didn't sleep at all.  
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• The travel exhaustion. Being all the above exhausted, but just in a new place.  
• June 29, 2018
• Charlotte's birthday is rounding the corner and I feel like I'm preparing myself to say goodbye to someone. It's the same feeling I had before Ali went in her mission. An undercurrent of dread and then a sudden tsunami of emotions when the car pulls away from her sister's wedding reception and you can't help crying even though Jordan and Zach are singing "I want you in my room boom boom boom," as an attempt to lighten the mood. It seems ridiculous to cry. It seems ridiculous not to.  
  
  
  Changing out Charlotte's 12 month clothes for 18 month clothes was the trigger. I shed some tears. I could hardly bear to look at her newborn clothes. Her activity, her independence had hinted that she was growing up. I can't help wonder where I was when all this changed happened. Crazed from sleep deprivation or sweating bullets trying to get everything done. Or just bored of watching Charlotte be Charlotte but not realizing that I could perhaps be watching her do something for the last time, like rolling instead of crawling to get somewhere.  
  
  
  
  
  I went to Laura Marostica's baby shower today. I gave her some solicited advice. But I want to tell her so much more! Mostly to validate the human experience of becoming a parent. Ask me anything I secretly begged all night. Oh my gosh, so many feelings seeing the tiny clothes and swaddles. Once upon a Time we swaddled Charlotte and she was just a mewing kitten.  

April post partum

(3/9/2019 note: We cried it out with Charlotte at the end of March. Can you tell the difference of what a full night of sleep gives you?? Things started looking more up in April :) )

Today was so great. Research Wednesday, a day unfettered by teaching responsibilities. I worked on nonprofit stuff, called professor McDonald about our paper, had lunch with Francis and Ingrid, and started thinking about done new research ideas.  

  

Yesterday Charlotte got her legs stuck in the bars or her crib. Chubby girl.  

  

We cuddled like we were dating, just laughing and talking. We watched the first episode of the good place. It felt so freeing not to feel bone-tired by 6 pm, not to have immediate almost impossible deadlines, not to be bickering because we have too much to do and no one to blame so we turn against each other. I went running today. I did the dishes. I worked 7 hours. I spent time with you. What a great day.  

April 13, 2018

Reflecting back on this semester it feels like a complete wash. This week was really difficult because I made that realization. I felt like the anxiety of completing the program and getting good advice come to a head with visit day. All the prospective students wanted to know about advisor-advisee relationships and everyone in my office is gushing about how they basically talk to advisors whenever they want and they never have to teach because they get grants. And I feel smaller and smaller every second. I have met with no professors this semester. That is pretty bad. To be fair, until about a month ago we were just drowning in your class and I was a complete zombie with sleep deprivation so I didn't really have the ability to critically think. Teaching this semester has also been difficult. Because I haven't taken demography before, I need to keep up with the material. And walking across campus for a class and sections is no small feat when I have to pump every 4 hours. I'm either dashing to class or from class to get my pumping in.  

  

Motherhood has been harder than I anticipated. This month marks one year since I stopped running.  

  

Things really have gotten so much better this month though, despite still being hard.  

April 18. 2018

I went on a very short run this morning with my cherubic running buddy and I feel so INVIGORATED. I love running so much. I really need to make it more of a priority.  

  

I'm feeling better about my academic situación. I still feel quite behind, but I'm slowly transitioning to the idea of working in private industry and allowing myself to seriously consider that rather than brush it off as a sell out option brings relief. Now I just need a dissertation. I'm talking to Jeff Sorensen today about his job at Amazon to learn more about it.  

  

I'm thinking about starting a blog. I need practice writing about research, so that's a good way to get my feet wet.  

  

I presented Andrew and mine's nonprofit project at UC Merced on Monday. That also got me thinking about an industry position. Because although being a profesor seems like a cushy job after tenure, it also seems a little isolated and to open ended for my liking. I think to have a large group of colleagues in your field of research you need to work at a place like Berkeley. But berkeley is a high stress job. So it doesn't seem like there's a good in between.  

March post partum post

(3/9/2019 note: December - March were the hardest months for me, so much so that I didn't want to write or was too tired  to). 

March 18, 2018

Agh! Where does the time go?  

Here's what's going on 

Charlotte 

• Her bottom two teeth popped up between last Sunday and this Sunday. There are her first two teeth! She's getting so big.  
• She also started sitting last Sunday. She is getting better at sitting for longer periods before falling backwards. If she falls to the side or forward, she usually uses her hands to catch herself and then wiggles to her stomach.  
• Thursday or Friday of two weeks ago (March 9 is), she army crawled on accident. She hasn't replicated the act, but she still does plenty of scooting backwards when she is trying to wiggle forwards. 
• She still doesn't laugh, but now screams high-pitched screams when she is truly delighted. She smiles readily and when she smiles her nose scrunches up. Oh it's so cute. 
• She is still waking up at 3 am no matter what we do. Lately she won't go to sleep for another hour or two. It's quite crushing for me. I just want to sleep so badly.  

Daniel 

• We are all running on fumes. You are almost done with this term and you are taking next term off. So we are all rejoicing. You are currently writing your paper for your reinforcement learning class with your teammate at Pinterest, where he works. Exciting.  
• Your scouts are completing merit badges and you are planning for a backpacking trip with them in July.  

Carla 

• I am falling apart. I feel like I'm needed all the time. In the morning I'm with Charlotte, during the day I'm trying to work on my school stuff, when I get home I'm trying to help you with your school stuff, and at night Charlotte needs me. Weekends are just more time to work. I feel like there is no break. On Thursday I didn't sleep all night because I couldn't relax. I wasn't panicking, but I just couldn't stop thinking about all the things we need to do and wondering whether Charlotte was going to sleep through the night or not. I'm not sure what to do, but I'm telling myself to just make it through one more week and this weekend we will have some time to breathe and regroup.  

November post partum (4 months old)

November 1

From my email to Ali: So many thoughts and I'm not sure how to order them. So let's just tackle them one at a time. As usual, I revert to lists because I am the epitome of linear thinking.  

  

1. Haziness. I feel like I am in a constant fog. But that is not really the correct way to describe it. I feel like I'm fully functioning, but everyone else is a superhuman and can function at a higher, faster level. Like everyone else can understand sped up YouTube videos and I have to listen a .75 speed. My to do lists have started to include minutia such as unsharing a colleagues dropbox folder that I no longer need. Last week I got on the bus to go to school. I got of two stops too early and then walked for ten minutes in the complete opposite direction of school before I realized what I was doing. While walking back towards school, I was stopped by someone asking me if I wanted to do something about racism. I said yes and ended up donating 5 dollars to this hip hop youth group in Berkeley. I felt so unmoored (not a word, but maybe you get what I mean?) and zoned out that I probably would have done anything she had asked me to do. Then I continued my walk to school and tripped on some stairs. At this point I was in tears, almost panic, like I can't take care of myself, will I ever make it to school unharmed? I made it. But I was a bit bruised physically and mentally.  

  

2. I'm doing okay? Three months out and I want to say I'm doing okay. But I am getting  a bit depressed about things. Firstly is the lack of exercise. I really thought I would just jump on the old running horse again. But alas, no. My joints have been struck by the malady of still being extremely "relaxed" after pregnancy so every pound on the pavement hurts. But forget about joint pain, the above-mentioned haziness usually gets to me before the joint pain can. I just feel like I'm full of lead and putting on tennis shoes and running seems nigh impossible at this point. I'm so tired. I just want to sit down. Also, I still have a belly. I'm six pounds away from pre-pregnancy weight, but I feel like my belly is more than six pounds worth? So even if I lost the six pounds it would still be there because it got so stretched out. What makes me feel stupidly worse about all this is that my mom is here to help me, so I really am doing much better than the average new mom. So why do I feel like I'm not doing okay? So tired and frazzled? How the heck does anyone else do this without their mom?  

  

3. Who am I? In the past year I feel like my identity has switched out a few times. First I was young, married, grad student Carla. Then I was young, married, grad student, pregnant Carla. Now I'm mom Carla. It's a dizzying turn of events. Totally predictable, but still dizzying.  

  

4. School feels a bit impossible. I had to write a data proposal and I passed it around to my adviser and a few other people for feedback and it was crushing. The feedback wasn't even that bad, just what I would usually expect. But the task of editing and reworking something in my current state of mind seems just as hard as writing the dang proposal in the first place. Ohhhh man. And I just feel dumb and self-conscious. What if I'm so tired that all my ideas are trivial and all my questions painfully obvious?  

  

I do have to note that my mom was out of town for 9 days, during which Daniel and I had three deadlines to meet, so I should cut myself some slack. I've come up with an analogy about motherhood. Being a new mom is like jumping into a cold pool a thousand times. Every little new thing is a jump in the cold pool. And most of the time it's better just to jump in than slowly creep in, timidly setting your toes forward inch by inch. For the first while every little thing is new and slightly shocking. Every time you breastfeed is a new experience. Then breastfeeding in public the first time. Packing the stroller into the car for the first time. Using the baby carrier for the first time. Changing a diaper in a public restroom. Driving in the car for more than half an hour. Traveling by plane. Parking in such a way so you can easily get the baby out of the car. Eventually you become adept at all these things and you feel like you are finally doggy paddling around in the pool. You are really holding your own! So then you add more complex strokes, breast stroke, freestyle, back stroke. And each stroke is another challenge. Going back to school. Putting together the Primary Program. And sometimes you feel like you entered a swimming competition that is much too advanced for you, but you just have to use your rudimentary swimming skills and swim your little tail off the best you can until you acclimate. Anyways, sometimes I am the content back stroker on a relaxing sunny afternoon, and other times I am the spent, last place, competitor who got in way over their head.   

  

Okay, sorry. This was all about me, me, me. Next time I will have some more extroverted things to say.